This invention relates generally to social networking, and in particular to providing relevant notifications for a user of a social networking system based on affinities that are common to the user and his or her friends in a social network.
Social networking systems have become prevalent in recent years because they provide a useful environment in which users can connect to and communicate with other users. A variety of different types of social networking systems exist that provide mechanisms allowing users to interact within their social networks. In this context, a user may be an individual or any other entity, such as a business or other non-person entity. Accordingly, while enabling social communications among friends, a social networking system can also be a valuable tool for businesses to engage with potential consumers.
However, businesses traditionally have had significant limits on providing advertisements and information to people that is relevant for people based on their interests, connections to others, and particular locations. At best, traditional avenues of providing information to users have consistently displayed advertisements based on basic user-provided profile information. Third party content providers have not yet been able to exploit the relationships and connections among members of a social networking website to determine preferences to impute to a user based on common preferences between the user and his or her connections in the social network.